ASK, TEST, LINK [ATL!]

FREE EDUCATION AND STRATEGY LUNCH & LEARN SERIES
For staff and leadership from Metro Atlanta homeless shelters and other agencies serving homeless or unstably housed clients.

People living with HIV (HIV+ people) are eligible for live-saving healthcare and housing benefits that your agency can help them access! Register for this FREE training series to learn more about how housing shelters and other service providers can talk to clients about HIV, connect those who are living with HIV to healthcare and housing resources and help them maintain stable housing!

Ask, Test, Link [ATL!] is more than training! Following the educational series, participants will apply what they learn in a two-part strategy intensive in which they will develop site-level plans to implement HIV prevention, testing and healthcare linkage strategies to bring back to their organizations. After our last session, we’ll become an HIV housing task force and continue collaborating and coordinating services!

MORE DETAILS
Courses are free to all registered attendees and lunch is provided. Course content gets progressively more advanced week-to-week and culminates in two strategic planning sessions in which agencies will work with HIV service organizations to develop flexible site-level plans to implement HIV prevention, testing and linkage-to-care programming.

Participants will learn the latest on HIV epidemiology, transmission, prevention and care, how homelessness and HIV are linked, and why we need to engage homeless service providers in the fight against HIV. Attendees will receive a binder of helpful information about HIV and our local HIV service landscape to be used throughout the series.

Module 2: From Reactive to Proactive: The Homeless Service Organization as an HIV prevention and testing site

This session will start our journey along the HIV Continuum of Care by examining modern risk and prevention information, discussing the basics of HIV testing and provide insight on how homeless service organizations might begin to discuss HIV, identify opportunities to offer testing and provide prevention information to clients.

Module 3: Passing the Baton, Not the Buck: Connecting people living with HIV into care

This session will continue our journey along the continuum of care, offering participants a clear understanding of the importance of linkage-to-care and linkage-to-housing for people living with HIV. Participants will learn about how HIV affects the body over time and why and how medical intervention works. Participants will learn different options for providing linkage to healthcare and housing from the point of testing or status disclosure at the homeless service organization.

Friday, October 20th, 2017
11:00am to 1:30pm
The Loudermilk Center
40 Courtland St NE
Atlanta, GA 30303
This session will challenge attendees to identify policies, practices and behaviors that stigmatize people living with HIV and those are at greatest risk for HIV and homelessness. Participants will discuss how HIV stigma, anti-LGBTQ and racial bias manifest at multiple levels of service, and learn tips for working compassionately and effectively with those most deeply affected by the HIV epidemic.

In this interactive session participants will break into groups and work with local artists living with HIV to craft an anti-stigma marketing campaign for Metro Atlanta homeless service providers. The main goal of the session is to create a flag or emblem that participating homeless service organizations can display to send the message that they aspire to be a stigma-conscious “safe harbor” entry point into HIV care.

Strategic Planning & Collective Commitment 1: Building a Vision for Atlanta homeless service organizations’ role in ending HIV.

In this session, facilitators will walk the group through the process of creating a vision and mission statement for this project. Then, participants will develop Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Limited (S.M.A.R.T.) goals for developing HIV testing programs at their own sites. Participants will choose from a menu of options for providing testing on-site.

In this session, facilitators will walk the group through the development of measurable goals around linking people living with HIV to medical care and housing. Representatives from local HIV Service Organizations and clinics will be present to work through collaboration ideas with individual shelters. Participants will elect co-chairs and other officers for a sustainability task force that will meet monthly to provide ongoing technical assistance.

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Georgia Equality is comprised of two separate corporate entities: Georgia Equality, Inc. and the Equality Foundation of Georgia, Inc. Both organizations are working to advance fairness, safety, and opportunity for Georgia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and allied communities. While there is some overlap in the work done by each entity, certain activities are done by one organization and not the other. Learn more about the distinction between these two organizations.